Read The Eaves of Heaven Online
Authors: Andrew X. Pham
The Eaves of Heaven
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
WHO TAUGHT ME COMPASSION AND SACRIFICE
AND MY FATHER
WHO TAUGHT ME REASON AND JUSTICE
AND FOR MY WIFE
WHO SUPPORTED ME THROUGH ALL MY STRUGGLES
AND MY CHILDREN
WHO BROUGHT ME JOY
T
HONG
V
AN
P
HAM
If I could,
I would trade
a thousand
years to hear
my mother’s
laughter.
TRAN TRUNG DAO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It seems that as memoirists, we are not historians, not even of our own lives. That is the job of biographers. Memoirs are our love letters and our letters of apologies, both. They hold our few gems, the noteworthy lessons of our journeys.
I did not set out to write my father’s biography. I have not written my father’s memoir. I have lent his life stories my words. The perspectives and sentiments within are his.
Except for the obvious and the famous, many names have been changed, primarily to make it easier for people who may not want to appear in his life story.
This work, the distillation of years of collaboration, has been my greatest pleasure and honor.
A
NDREW
X. P
HAM
THE NORTH
1940
PROLOGUE
A
NCESTORS
M
y family came from the Red River Delta, an alluvial plain of raven earth and limitless water. It was an exceptionally fertile country, though not a youthful land with treasures to be plundered. What riches it had, it yielded solely to sweat and toil. It had known centuries of peasant hands.
Generations beyond recall, my ancestors had tilled this soil where fortunes were made and reversed by countless successions of insurgencies, raids, and wars. The rise of our clan began with my great-great-great-grandfather Hao Pham, a noted officer in King Nguyen Anh’s army. For his battlefield victories against rebellious warlords, he was awarded a vast tract of land after the king’s unification of Viet Nam in 1802. As was customary in the feudal order for the richest man in the area, he won the privilege of lord proctorship over all the villages within a day’s ride by horseback of his home. He assumed the post, raised a big family with three wives, and lived out his days in comfort. When he retired, his eldest son succeeded him, acquiring the same commission. Later, in the French colonial period, when the clan’s property had grown even larger, his grandson became domain magistrate. So it went from generation to generation, both land and titles passed as birthrights from fathers to the firstborn sons. By the time of my grandfather and father, ours grew to be one of the two richest clans in the province, our holdings spreading out to the horizon.
Still, it was a realm of rice paddies, mud houses, and shoeless peasants. It was a world before the arrival of electricity, banks, and refrigeration. In the whole province, there were only two cars. My uncle Thuan owned one, but kept it merely as a modern marvel. He was more comfortable astride a horse. In our village of a thousand souls, there was a single firearm—a double-barreled shotgun Uncle used to hunt birds. For weaponry, there were swords, spears, and martial arts. The only other technological intrusions into our village were two mechanical clocks; my father owned one, and my uncle owned the other. Prized collectibles, neither was used to tell the hour. For that, there were the crows of the cock, the height of the sun, and the length of one’s shadow. The average peasant owned three sets of clothes, brown or black pajamas, the same exact outfit in varying degrees of wear, with the newest reserved for holidays and temple visits. He rose before dawn and labored till dusk, and might expect to have a small amount of meat with his dinner. In the material sense, it was a simpler world. There was little, and yet everything, to be desired. Though perhaps as flatlanders we lacked imagination. Folks prayed for good health, good weather, and good crops. And that strange year, the last of the good years, all things were granted. Heaven laid the seal of prosperity upon our land. We were blessed with the most bountiful harvest in memory.
That summer, Uncle Thuan, the head of our clan, confessed to his third wife that he believed the wind of fortune was shifting, and that, at thirty-nine years of age, he felt disaster looming. Omens had shown themselves. First, the string of good years crowned by a historic crop signaled a grave imbalance in nature; another cycle was approaching. Second, a crow, that provincial harbinger of death, had alighted in his courtyard and stared into his audience hall. The scarecrows he had erected hadn’t prevented the cursed bird from paying him another visit. Last, he dreamt that the bamboo hedge encircling our ancestral estate was filled with voices speaking a foreign tongue; an evil had laid siege to our home. Within days of this nightmare, talk of war was rampant throughout the countryside. Disturbing reports came through his intelligence channels. The underground worlds were gathering their forces. A great storm approached, so warned his Nationalist informants; so concurred his Communist agents. Then, the colonial French suppressed and denied the rumor, which naturally made it a fact. The shadow of war had fallen upon the world. Dark days would sweep down from China. Within weeks, World War II would reach the Red River Delta on the heels of the Japanese army and mark the downfall of our clan.
THE SOUTH
MAY
1956
1. L
EAVING
H
OME
R
ight after my high school graduation in 1956, I found myself on a bus headed north to a small coastal town where a summer teaching position awaited me. Outside the windows, the ratty fringe of Saigon slipped away—dirt lanes and sewage creeks banked by weathered shacks and smoldering fires. Women stooped with age swept smooth the bare ground in front of their homes. Naked toddlers stood in doorways, knuckling sleep from their eyes. Fresh incense on roadside altars sent tendrils of prayers heavenward. Above the mottled tin roofs, early sun flicked through the foliage. A breeze carried the grassy scent of paddy water. I was twenty-one and striking out on my own for the first time. I had a suitcase with two pairs of slacks, three white shirts, underwear, a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a comb. My first week’s wages would afford me another pair of trousers and a shirt. It wouldn’t be appropriate for the students to notice their new teacher’s meager wardrobe.
Passengers outnumbered seats on the bus, but the driver kept on picking up more people along the way, the ticket-man happily pocketing their fares. The bag-man roped the luggage together in a great camel-hump on the roof: bamboo cages of ducks and chickens, wooden crates, boxes, rucksacks, bundles of fresh vegetables. A number of people spent their whole trip standing or sitting on their valises crammed in the aisle. Some used the bus as a local shuttle service to nearby villages.
It was a Friday, so there were plenty of travelers, too many toddlers for a peaceful journey. Somewhere up front, a baby wailed relentlessly. A ruckus broke out at the rear. A rooster had gotten loose and half the bus erupted into flurries of hands, feathers, and screams. The owner leaped over two rows of seats, caught his rooster by the neck, and landed in the lap of a merchant woman. She said, “Thank you, Buddha, but what’s a granny like me to do with two roosters?” Trader-women hooted. A plump matron said, “I’ll take the big one, he’s not so bad looking.” Another chortled and said, “The feathery one has more stud potential.” They cackled, and the man, red-faced, crept back to his seat with his bird tucked safely in a sack. The women continued cajoling as though they were sitting at home. Their cheerful mood was infectious, and I felt rather buoyant, even though I was wedged between an old man, who squatted barefoot in his seat, and the window. But having the window was enough for me to consider this as a propitious beginning. Lightheaded with freedom, I felt as though I was flying on newly discovered wings.
It seemed so effortless, as if I had, by receiving a diploma, strolled through a magical portal, and left behind my whole family crowded in a shed of a house. The ease by which this job came to me made it seemed like destiny. Things had been difficult since we fled Hanoi two years ago, so I loved feeling that I was at last on the right path. All I did was answer the first ad I saw in the
Saigon Daily.
It was a math and science position at a private school. After a few letters, I was granted an interview.
The principal came to my family’s noodle shop. Mr. Thinh Nguyen was a short, thick-bodied man in his late forties, with a small hump on his back, which he immediately explained was from a motorcycle accident. Despite this handicap, he was elegant in his movements and had the graceful glide-walk of a short-legged man. He smoked small French-style cigarettes made in Vietnam.
By our accents, we knew we were both northerners. As it turned out, he had studied in Hanoi and roomed not far from our old neighborhood. I told him my family were refugees, arriving two years ago under the Geneva Accord, which gave the Vietnamese Communists the northern half of the country. He said he had to leave his home a few years before then. Like most refugees, he didn’t talk about why he fled or what he left behind, and that was fine with me. Everyone had lost something. No one willingly chose an impoverished exile, dislocated from his birth-village and the spirits of his ancestors. I respected his silence and he did not press me for details of our plight. I appreciated the courtesy. Looking around at the rancid hovel in which my entire family lived and worked—the crude tables, the dirt floor, the windowless loft—I thought it would sound vaunted or, perhaps, blatantly false if I tried to explain who we once were, or spoke of our lineage. It wasn’t shame; we were beyond that.
As soon as we started talking about my academic records, he switched over to French. I liked it because I felt more comfortable in French when speaking with superiors and elders. French was more egalitarian than Viet. It was generous of him. Besides, it was natural for us to speak French, since it had been the official language of academia in Vietnam for longer than we had been alive. Generations of Vietnamese students spent lifetimes in classrooms speaking, writing, reading, and breathing French texts. So it did not seem ironic to me then that we sat there, two North Vietnamese exiles in a dark and greasy noodle shop on the edge of Saigon, conversing in French when neither one of us had ever set foot in France. We both had suits of Parisian cut and sported Western haircuts, and were more well-read in French poetry and European literature than most French soldiers. And yet, if we saw a Frenchman strolling toward us, we might, out of revulsion, cross the road to avoid him. The language had become a condition of our lives. It did not occur to us to scorn it or discard it from our tongues. It would have been impossible to try.
As the principal started talking about his school, his quaint town, and the fine French things he enjoyed, I thought of the manicured villas around our neighborhood in Hanoi; the fabulous bistros my father frequented with the whole family; the bouillabaisse, the croissants, and the ice cream. The best times of my life in Hanoi came flitting back into my head. Soon I was swimming in romanticism, drawing parallels between Hanoi and Phan Thiet, even though the most I’d seen of Phan Thiet until then had been little sketches on the labels of fish sauce bottles. As for the looks of the town or its people, I hadn’t a clue, although I imagined it to be some idyllic fishing village of white beaches lined with coconut palms, maybe with an ice cream parlor where I could enjoy a peach melba after a swim.
“Most of my teachers are moonlighting from the public schools. You won’t feel alone,” he said after we had chatted amiably for about an hour. “I only have three teachers on my permanent staff, and this position is for the only full-time science-math teacher for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. It’s only three morning classes and the job comes with room and board. Do you think you’re ready to teach?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Congratulations, you’ve got the job. With your father’s permission, we’ll start you in your own classroom next week.”
My father was concerned, with good reason, that a job far from home might sidetrack me from my goal of a higher education. However, he disapproved of my recent involvement in students’ political demonstrations, some of which had turned violent. He knew that a summer out of town would keep me out of trouble. On top of that, we needed the money. Our
pho
restaurant, my father’s ill-conceived attempt to bring northern cooking to the southerners, was on the verge of collapse, taking with it the last bit of a mighty family fortune that went back many generations. We had lost everything in the fall of Hanoi. With financial catastrophe looming, he swallowed his protests and made me promise that I would write every week and return to attend Saigon University in the fall.
To escape, I would have promised him all the fish in the Saigon River.
O
N
the 28th of July, two years ago, my family had fled Hanoi in a huge Dakota cargo plane. We were traveling with my stepmother’s parents and their other daughter, who was my age. The cargo hold was packed with refugees sitting on the baseboard of the plane and clinging to straps and netting. We landed at Saigon’s airport. Disoriented after a long and turbulent flight, we stumbled off the plane, anxious to get out of the cramped hold and put our feet on the ground again. Half the people were covered in vomit. We huddled in the shade of the plane, each toting a single allotted valise, and squinted at our new homeland. It felt like a foreign country.
The airport was three times larger than Gia Lam Airport in Hanoi. The tarmac sprawled in every direction. Buildings and gigantic hangars lined the long runway. Squadrons of warplanes and cargo carriers were parked in neat rows. The humid air was impregnated with the sting of fuel and engine exhaust. Convoys of trucks rumbled back and forth across the tarmac. Crews were unloading and refueling the cargo planes. They were flying nonstop around the clock, transporting refugees, French troops, and equipment out of the North. A somber mood of retreat permeated the scene.
A fat Chinese-Vietnamese man wearing a khaki colonial hat, a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, and a pair of sandals took a list from the French sergeant, and then came forward to welcome us with open arms. He beamed a generous smile, which immediately put us North Vietnamese on guard.
“Welcome to Saigon, misses and children. My name is Mr. Fourth,” he said.
It took us a moment to grasp his southern accent. Among other things, he got the “v” and “o” sounds mixed up with the “z” and “u.” His phrasing sounded very odd. Older people flinched, as North Vietnamese commonly addressed a group by saying “Dear ladies, dear gentlemen.” I would later learn that “misses and children” was the southern way of saying “folks” and that South Vietnamese seldom called each other by their first names, but by the order of their birth. If a man was the firstborn, they called him “Second” because the title “First” belonged to the village headman. Accordingly, Mr. Fourth was the third-born in his family.
He had us board two buses to go to our temporary lodgings. Outside the airport, orchards and houses lined the busy, fume-choked road. Without rice fields, the land looked drier than in the North. We passed through a tin-shack slum. The air above the roofs wavered with heat. It was a sprawl of rust and decay. The streets were bare, unpaved. Mounds of putrid garbage stewed in the sun. There wasn’t a single tree to shoulder the searing heat. Women wore pajama-like clothes and wrapped checkered scarves on their heads. Most men went shirtless and shoeless, covering themselves with only a pair of shorts or a sarong that came halfway down their thighs. There were small groceries, motorbike repair shops, and fruit vendors with strange bright-colored fruits piled high in baskets and bananas hanging under the awnings. Closer to Saigon proper, there were more two-and three-story buildings, dwellings mixed in with shops and warehouses. Every sidewalk was teeming with kiosk-diners filled with shirtless men drinking. People ate right on the street, their backs to the thrumming traffic, their heads swimming in engine exhaust. It was a sobering sight because in Hanoi only the expensive restaurants and bistros put tables on the sidewalk. The cheapest vendors would be the ones putting low benches on the side of the road for customers. In Hanoi everyone was fully clothed; even laborers didn’t go outside shirtless, much less sit down to eat. Saigon seemed to me a very unruly, graceless city. It might have been uplifting to see the city center, but the bus took a meandering route, veering on the outskirts and turning onto one small street after another until we arrived in Saigon’s Chinatown.
Compared to Hanoi’s Chinatown, which spanned a few city blocks, Cho Lon was practically a city. It coexisted side by side with Saigon like an unattractive sibling; it was grimy, bustling, cacophonous. The buildings were crammed together, as if they grew on top of one another. Every door was a storefront with bins of goods, produce, and meats spilling onto the sidewalk. Upstairs were offices with placard billboards and living quarters with laundry hanging out the windows. The city generated its own breeze, a mixture of sewage, garbage, aromatic noodle soup, baked buns, dishwater, roast duck, and mildew.
It was, in fact, the powerhouse of South Vietnam. Cho Lon Chinese controlled the vast majority of trading houses, which also handled the shipping and warehousing of every conceivable commodity for domestic consumption and export.
The buses delivered us to a three-story hotel on a wide commercial street. Typical of the low-end Chinese establishments, it was a sad, dark, dingy place, manned by a humorless middle-age Chinese who couldn’t summon a greeting or a smile. The lobby was an eight-by-eight-foot space with a wooden bench and a board painted with the hotel rules in Chinese and Viet. It was devoid of decoration—not a single painting, poster, or potted plant. The windowless rooms were small and hot, with clumps of cobwebs in the corners. The ceiling fans did nothing but draw out the reek of mildew and cigarettes from the peeling walls. Stuffy air from the hallway oozed into the rooms through wooden screens above the doors. There was a communal bathroom on each floor. Surprisingly, there was one redeeming feature in the building: the toilet. It was a squat affair with a cast-iron water tank mounted up near the ceiling. Back in Hanoi, where there was no sewage system, we only had pit toilets filled with calcium oxide powder, the compost collected periodically by municipal workers using ox-drawn carts. A flush toilet, I thought, was surely a sign of civilization.
